Take the Money and Run

NOW THAT WE'VE SEEN a good sample of President Bush's negotiating style, we would not suggest that either Arabs or Israelis plan on dominating the next phase of the quest for peace in the Middle East. Iraq is not the example we are thinking of, either. It's the president's result in his negotiations with the fractious individualists at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. In an amazing display of negotiating skill, President Bush managed to get a bigger tax cut out of Congress than he asked for originally.

Just as President Reagan always used to say that it was amazing what you could get done in Washington if you were willing to let somebody else take the credit, President Bush could say (but never would) that it's amazing what you can get done in Washington if you are willing to keep silent while somebody else lies through his teeth.

This president asked Congress for a set of tax cuts that were officially estimated to reduce government revenues by $750 billion over 10 years. A bipartisan majority of lawmakers was duly horrified at the threat to spending as usual. Some of the swing votes said they would take nothing larger than $350 billion. After several months of negotiation, Congress passed and Bush signed a tax-cut bill that was officially estimated to reduce government revenues by $350 billion, allowing his opponents and his lukewarm supporters to claim a sort of victory.

The trick, widely recognized by budget fanatics but too complex for a headline, was to enact tax cuts that would have been officially estimated as worth $850 billion or so over 10 years, and also to enact shorter expiration dates so that they would not be scored for the full 10 years. This sunset strategy satisfied the swing voters' need to have it both ways.

In a period marked by a tax bill every year, the 10-year estimates have no real meaning. The only estimate that matters, if any do, is the estimate of revenues in the coming fiscal year, the one year before everything changes again.

What will the tax cuts really be worth to the federal fisc and to the economy? Ask an econometrician. But don't ask two, or three or ten or a hundred, because if you do you will get two or three or ten or a hundred different answers. Econometric computers are subject to the assumptions in their programming. If an analyst believes, for instance, that a reduction in the top income tax rates stimulates investment, raises profits, elevates the stock market, adds jobs and increases government revenue, his computer spits out projections accordingly. If not, it doesn't.

The same goes for the other major features--dividend tax cuts, changes in the tax status of married couples who both work, and increases in the tax break for having children.

Economic stimulus is as economic stimulus does, and it all depends. Economists can't even be sure that the recession happened, never mind whether it's about to be over. How can we put any faith in projections of economic activity a decade hence?

The new tax bill does represent modest progress toward two goals: Nobody should pay more than a quarter of his income to the federal government; corporate profits should not be taxed twice.

It also will have an important political effect. Instead of making painless promises to enact the next dramatic expansion of government spending, such as a prescription-drug benefit for all elderly regardless of financial need, candidates will have to bundle their spending proposals with tax increases.

Planning for the Unthinkable

Congress should settle its succession issues and make a will

ONE YEAR AND NINE MONTHS after the attacks of Sept. 11, the U.S. Capitol still stands, though it apparently also was a target that terrible day. All the agencies of government in Washington, D.C., still function about as well as ever, which may indicate that terrorists like those of Sept. 11 have not come into possession of a nuclear weapon, or powerful chemical weapons, or the tools of germ warfare.

How long will this proof stand?

A bipartisan group of former officials styling themselves the Commission on the Continuity of Government have forced themselves to consider the possibility that Washington, the city and the government, will not stand forever. They have forced themselves to ask: "What if it doesn't stand?" The answer is disturbing. The lines of official succession are not as clear as they should be. The country needs to provide for temporary replacement of its lawmakers.

The need is particularly urgent in the matter of the House of Representatives. An act of Congress provides for presidential succession. Although the mechanism should be improved, at least there is a mechanism. The Constitution provides for governors to make temporary appointment of senators to fill vacancies until replacements can be elected. In the event of vacancies in the House it provides only for governors to issue writs of election. Under current state laws, special elections could take months.

Even more difficult than the filling of vacancies is the possibility of mass incapacitation, such as less-than-fatal infection or exposure to chemicals. Here the Constitution, federal law and the rules of each house of Congress are completely silent.

Commission co-chairman Lloyd Cutler, one of the grayest of eminences among Washington Democratic party lawyers, acknowledged the other day that it may be hard to create a popular groundswell for a Constitutional amendment for the smooth succession of members of congress. "If you asked people to consider what would happen if a third of Congress were killed, a lot of average Americans would ask you what would be wrong with that."

But it takes a functioning Congress to appropriate money, and a functioning Senate to confirm cabinet officers, judges and many federal officers, including all the generals and admirals of the military. A devastating blow in Washington might leave the rest of the country much less able to respond.

Chances are that the U.S. would have plenty of government left. The state governors and legislatures, the federal offices outside the District of Columbia, the military, the surviving members of the Congress and the judiciary, and above all, the sovereign people themselves, would muddle through to deal with any catastrophe that might cut the continuity of government. But the commission asks, "Why take chances?"

During the Cold War, when the threat to Washington and the entire country was immeasurably greater, Congress took a different step. Three times, the Senate passed a resolution to amend the Constitution on succession, but each time the House of Representatives rejected it. Instead, Congress funded creation of a secret radiation-proof hideaway at the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia, complete with legislative chambers.

The hideaway, however, was built on the presumption that there would be time to move before an enemy attack -- time to recognize a deteriorating political situation and make preparations. Terrorism probably will provide no such warning.

The Commission for the Continuity of Government, organized by the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution and funded by the Carnegie, Hewlett, Packard and MacArthur foundations, urges Congress and the states to adopt a Constitutional amendment giving Congress new power to deal by law with "mass vacancies" and "mass incapacitation."

Cutler acknowledges this may be difficult, for it amounts to telling Congress to make its institutional last will and testament. Nobody likes doing that, until they see the unintended consequences of not doing it.

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